Tuesday, September 23, 2014

Keller Esrog Center, located at 7 Earl Court, will be offering esrogim for sale on weeknights between 10:00 PM to 11:00 PM, on Motzai Shabbos from 9:30 PM to 1:00 AM, and on Erev Sukkos from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM.

For more information, please call Efrayim Keller at 718-778-0804 or 845-362-1510.

There will be kaparos on Thursday October 2, Erev Yom Kippur, from 7:00 PM to 12:00 AM at 79 Regina Road with shechita available on the premises.As per Rabbi Lesches the minhag Chabad is to do kaparos with shechita on Erev Yom Kippur. The cost is $12 per chicken.Please be sure to order tickets in advance. To reserve or for more information, please click here or contact kaparot@klimovitsky.com.Thanks to Rabbi Lesches for his help in organizing and giving the hashgacha for the kaparos.

The Shabbos Project is a wonderful program that aims to bring the beauty of Shabbos to thousands around the world who would otherwise not celebrate and keep Shabbos. This program has been carried out very successfully in South Africa and other communities.

Rabbi Dov and Shevi Oliver and Mrs. Bracha Meshchaninov are working on bringing The Shabbos Project to Rockland and join in this global show of Achdus on Shabbos Parshas Noach, Rosh Chodesh Cheshvan, the 24th and 25th of October.

We are asking you to invite people who would otherwise not keep Shabbos to your home - family, friends, work colleagues or anyone else you may know - who could benefit and enjoy a genuine Shabbos experience.

There will likely also be a pre-event on Thursday night and a post-Shabbos musical Melave Malka on Motzei Shabbos.

While we don't expect rock solid commitments right know, please email dovoliver@gmail.com if you think it's likely that you'll be able to participate by hosting your people for that Shabbos.

Monday, September 22, 2014

There will be a farbrengen at Tzemach Tzedek following the 9:30 PM Maariv minyan this Tuesday, 29 Elul, September 23, in honor of the birthday of the third Lubavitcher Rebbe, the Tzemach Tzedek, in 1789.

The third Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneersohn of Lubavitch (1789-1866), was born on the 29th of Elul. Orphaned from his mother at age 3, he was raised by his maternal grandfather, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi. Rabbi Menachem Mendel assumed the leadership of Chabad in 1827, upon the passing of his father-in-law and uncle, Rabbi DovBer of Lubavitch. Extremely active in communal affairs, he established and funded Jewish farming colonies which provided a livelihood for thousands of families. He also stood at the forefront of the battle against the "Enlightenment Movement" which, with the support of the Czarist regime, sought to destroy traditional Jewish life - a battle which earned him no less than 22 imprisonments and arrests. In the course of his lifetime, Rabbi Menachem Mendel penned more than 48,000 pages of Chassidic teachings and Halachic exegesis. He is known as the "Tzemach Tzedek" ("a sprouting of righteousness") after his work of Halachic responsa by that name.

With the approach of the Shemitta year, the Alter Rebbe strongly recommends to also make a Pruzbul now, before the beginning of the Shemitta year, based on the opinion of the רא"ש.

In our generation, the Rebbe strongly urged people to follow this recommendation of the Alter Rebbe, and at the same time, the Rebbe established, for practical reasons, that this should be performed together with Hatoras Nedarim.

Furthermore, the Rebbe suggested that everyone should organize a loan, in order to create a necessity to perform Pruzbul, as in this way one would show his endearment to תקנת חכמים. It should be noted that as Pruzbul only takes effect on loans made beforehand, one should organize the loan before making Pruzbul.

Since it is not customary for women (and girls) to make Hatoras Nedarim, therefore they should fill out this form online. Also those who didn’t manage to make Pruzbul at Hatoras Nedarim, should fill in the form as well.

This online facility will be available until Hadlokas Neiros before Yom Tov.

Thursday, September 18, 2014

I call today upon heaven and earth as witnesses for you. I have set before you life and death, blessing and curse. And you shall choose life, so that you and your children may live. (Deuteronomy 30:19)

In the double Torah reading this week Nitzavim and Vayelech (Devorim [Deuteronomy] 29:9 -31:30),
we find the above verse instructing the Jews to “choose life”. Do we really need the Torah to tell us to choose life? Which person of sound mind would choose death?

An important answer here is that the Torah is emphasizing here that one must make a conscious decision to live and not just vegetate. And I don’t mean to live it up by living life in the fast lane. To “choose life” means to choose to live a meaningful life, a life committed to values and a higher purpose. Did it make any difference at all in that I inhabited planet Earth for so many years? Will anyone really know the difference if I’m gone? Is my life productive, worthwhile?

It is told that when the fist Chabad Rebbe, Rabbi Schneur Zalman of Liadi, wanted to bless Reb Yekutiel Liepler with wealth, he declined the offer, saying that he was afraid it would distract him from more spiritual pursuits. When the Rebbe then offered to bless him with longevity, Reb Yekutiel stipulated that it should not be “peasant’s years, with eyes that do not see and ears that do not hear, where one neither sees nor senses G‑dliness.”

Reb Yekutiel was rather fussy, it seems. The holy Rebbe is offering him an amazing blessing, and he is making conditions! Yes, he chose life, and he chose to live a life that would be purposeful and productive, and that really would make a tangible difference. He wasn’t interested in a long life if, essentially, it would amount to an empty life.

As we stand just before Rosh Hashanah, let us resolve to choose life. Let us live lives of Torah values and noble deeds. And may we all be blessed with a good, healthy, prosperous and sweet new year.

Monday, September 15, 2014

On September 7, 2014 Ramapo Police were notified by a a few parents that a few students, ages 6 through 9, from the Cheder Chabad Boy’s School on 246 N. Main St., Spring Valley, were dropped off on September 5, 2014 after school approximately 30 minutes later then their designated time – and at a location approximately one mile from their designated stop. The parents also reported that the students appeared dehydrated and scared.

Upon further investigation the Ramapo Police Department charged the bus driver of the East Ramapo Central School District Bus Co., Floyd James, age 53, of Chestnut Ridge, NY, with Endangering the Welfare of a Child, a class A misdemeanor.

James was arraigned before Judge Simon in the Town of Ramapo Justice Court and released on recognizance for a future court appearance on October 7, 2014 at 9:00 a.m.

Register by Tuesday, September 15, and get the early bird special of $45.00.

Parents can register online. Please go to www.ChederMonsey.org and follow the step-by-step setup guide. You can also register by bringing check or cash to the Cheder office. Please write clearly what it's for.

For those that are not in the Cheder and would like the oppurtunity to be part of Tzivos Hashem please contact the email below to sign up.

If you have any questions or comments on how to register please email tzivoshashem@chedermonsey.org.

Thursday, September 11, 2014

It stands out very prominently in this week's Torah reading in this week’s portion Ki Sovo (Devorim [Deuteronomy] 26:1-29:8): fifty-five consecutive verses of nightmarish misery and torture, all destined to befall the Jewish people when they will be exiled from their land because of their sins. Many of the curses are so appalling that they are difficult to read. Indeed, the Baal Koreh (public reader of the Torah in the synagogue) is expected to read these verses quickly and in a quieter voice than usual.

Astoundingly, these maledictions are included in Moses' parting words to the nation he loved so much, whom he lovingly shepherded for forty difficult years.

Some questions don't need to be asked – they jump out at you. Even if G‑d intended to bring all these punishments on His people, what is the purpose in describing them in the Torah in such gruesome detail? Furthermore, why does Moses use only fourteen verses to describe the rewards and blessings which G‑d will shower upon us when we will obey His commandments – less than a third of the verses used to describe the maledictions?!

What is the purpose in describing the curses in such gruesome detail?Sadly, every one of these dreadful prophecies has come to pass. Indeed, if these verses wouldn't be part of the Torah, they could be mistaken for a Holocaust memoir written by a concentration camp survivor: "You will serve your enemies, whom the L-rd will send against you, [when you are] in famine, thirst, destitution, and lacking everything... And your life will hang in suspense before you. You will be in fear night and day, and you will not believe in your life. In the morning, you will say, 'If only it were evening!' and in the evening, you will say, 'If only it were morning!'…"

After experiencing such horrors it is only natural to ask, "Where was G‑d?" and, "If there really is a G‑d, how could He allow the inhumanity and cruelty of the Holocaust?" No one questions the source of our blessings, but after enduring excruciating pain, people begin to have doubts. Perhaps this is why all the suffering is so vividly portrayed in the Torah. How can the Holocaust be used to deny G‑d's existence when G‑d Himself informed us that this event will occur? This is not to say that we can possibly understand the reasons for our nation's tormented history, but we do know that it is all from G‑d – and therefore ultimately for our good.

In truth, Moses is doing much more than informing us of the troubles which we will experience; he is telling us not to lose our faith because of them. Reading this week's Torah portion and seeing how it has actually all come to pass offers us a measure of hope. It strengthens our belief that we will also certainly see the realization of the conclusion of this prophecy (in next week's Torah portion): "The L-rd, your G‑d, will bring back your exiles, and He will have mercy upon you… Even if your exiles are at the end of the heavens, the L-rd, your G‑d, will gather you from there…And the L-rd, your G‑d, will place all these curses upon your enemies and upon your adversaries who pursue you."

Wednesday, September 10, 2014

Non Profit Organization in Monsey looking for mature female who is computer proficient (Word/Excel/Outlook), with marketing, writing, organizational skills, phone skills, and can ensure that all details of multiple projects/fundraisers are carried out in a timely and efficient manner.

Monday, September 8, 2014

Saturday, September 6, 2014

By Mareesa Nicosia, The Journal NewsTransportation glitches during the first week of school are expected, but some East Ramapo parents said their experiences were downright scary.

Back-to-school week in the East Ramapo district began with more than the usual anxiety-inducing transportation and communication glitches, leaving some parents scrambling to track down their children, they said.

Neighbors Eli Cohen and Michal Rimler of Spring Valley said their children, students at Cheder Chabad of Monsey, were dropped off at the corner of Route 306 and Brick Church Road on Friday after a bus driver reportedly refused to deliver the boys to their regular stops in front of their homes.

"Essentially, the kids were all getting antsy and, supposedly, they told the bus driver to stop, so the driver pulled over and the kids got off the bus," Cohen said.

His 7-year-old then walked almost a half-mile along Route 306 in the blazing heat.

Rimler, whose children were on the same bus, began to panic after waiting nearly an hour for her 6- and 7-year-old sons to return home Friday afternoon.

She couldn't get through to the East Ramapo transportation office on the phone, so she drove to the building on New Hempstead Road to ask for help. Instead, her concerns were met with indifference, she said.

In the meantime, a friend driving on Route 306 recognized her children walking and ferried them safely home.

"You know, the first few days, there's always bumps. That's normal," Rimler said. "But like this — letting kids off in the wrong places, on the main streets — this is something else."

Rimler said she managed to speak to the the district's new director of transportation, Sandra Owens, who apologized. The transportation office phone line was not in service Friday afternoon and a message left for Owens at the superintendent's office wasn't returned.

A woman who answered the phone at Student Bus Company, one of several transportation contractors East Ramapo uses, told The Journal News they had some snafus and late arrivals Thursday, the first day of school, but that Friday went better.

The woman, who identified herself only as Dawn, said the company "just got all new routes (Thursday) afternoon from East Ramapo," which likely added to the chaos.

When the boy, a fourth-grader at Eldorado Elementary School, failed to appear at the bus stop where she was expecting him Thursday, Franklin began a frantic search, driving around town and calling the district from her cell phone.

She was able to track the boy to a school bus, but it was not the one to which he had been assigned, she said.

"(For the district) to not even contact a parent, it was scary," she said. "There's no sort of order. There's no sort of compassion."

A message left at Chestnut Ridge Transportation, the contractor Franklin said transports her brother, was not returned.

East Ramapo has about 20 fewer bus drivers this year and has taken several older vehicles off the road, cost-cutting measures the school board approved in the spring.

Each year, the district lays out the money for transporting more than 30,000 students — about 9,000 from public schools, the rest from private schools — and is reimbursed by the state for about 72 percent of the cost, officials have said. About 12.5 percent of the district's $210 million budget will go to transportation this school year.

There will be a farbrengen following the 9:30 PM Maariv minyan this Wednesday night, September 10, in honor of the founding of "Yeshivas Tomchei Temimim Lubavitch", the first Yeshiva to integrate studying the revealed part of Torah (Gemara and Halachah) together with the esoteric teachings of Chassidus in a formal study program, by the Rebbe Rashab on 15 Ellul in 1897.

Thursday, September 4, 2014

We are now in the Hebrew month of Elul, just a few weeks away from Rosh Hashanah and the High Holidays – a time of reflection, introspection and taking on new resolutions with which to enhance our lives, spiritually and meaningfully.

Cheder Chabad of Monsey hopes that these weekly Torah thoughts will help inspire to achieve those goals. All the students, staff and administration of Cheder Chabad of Monsey wish you and yours a happy, healthy and prosperous New Year. May this year be the year of the full and complete redemption with the coming of our righteous Moshiach - Nnow!

"When you go out to war on your enemies and G-d will place him in your hands..." No, that's not a typo. The sentence you just read is a direct translation of Deuteronomy 21:10, the opening verse of this week's Torah reading of Ki Teitzei (Devorim [Deuteronomy] 21:10-25:19).

The wording of the Written Torah is extremely precise. When a grammatical anomaly appears--such as plural "enemies" who turn mid-sentence into a singular "him"- the Midrashim and commentaries will immediately step in to unearth the story behind the story and reveal the hidden lesson.

The Egyptians, the Amalekites, the Babylonians, the Romans, the Church, the Almohades, the Nazis, the Soviets...and now, the militant Islamists, who just want us dead; we've had no shortage of enemies in our 4,000-year history. Generally speaking, they can be divided into two groups: spiritual enemies and physical enemies.

Yet these two enemies of Israel are intrinsically one. Time and again, Jewish history tells the story of how the weakening of our spiritual identity invariably leads to physical decline. An enemy of the Jewish soul is an enemy of the Jewish body, just as an enemy of the Jewish body is obviously an enemy of the Jewish soul.

This is the lesson implicit in the opening verse of our parshah: Our first line of defense in the war for Jewish survival is the realization that our plural "enemies" are, in truth, a singular "him." That the physical and spiritual fate of our people are inexorably intertwined. We must regard each physical attack against a Jew as an attack against the eternal spirit of Israel, and treat every spiritual danger as a threat to our physical survival.

What must we do to win the war? How is the battle to be waged so that "G-d will place him in your hands"? The answer lies enfolded in another grammatical curio in Ki Teitzei's opening verse:

"When you go to war on your enemies..."

We focus now on the word "on" in this line -- al in the Hebrew. The Hebrew word al, like its English equivalent, can mean, in this context, "against." In the simple meaning of the verse, going to war "on your enemies" means going to war against your enemies. But the word can also be understood in the sense of "above": don't go to war against them, go to war above them.

We have seen this so often in our experience as a people that we really shouldn't need a grammatical twist of a Torah verse to inform us of it. When we went to war above our enemies, confident of our moral and spiritual superiority and unapologetic of the righteousness of our cause, we always triumphed in the end, no matter how outnumbered we might have been in quantity of men and arms. But when we begin to doubt our own goodness, when we begin to regard decadent murderers as our moral equals, we are doomed to lose ground, even when, on the physical plane, we hold the military and strategic advantage.

A lesson as simple as it is profound: When you go out to war on your enemies, G-d will place him in your hands.

The new Mesivta Lubavitch of Monsey opened its doors on yesterday, 7 Elul, to parents and talmidim of Shiur Alef. Families had the opportunity to meet with the Hanhola and teachers of the Yeshiva, become familiar with all aspects of the Yeshiva, and help their sons move into to the Yeshiva’s comfortable and newly updated dormitory.

The Menahel, Rabbi Landa, gave beautiful opening remarks, stressing the connection of the new Yeshiva to the establishment of Tomchei Tmimim which will be noted this coming week on 15 Elul.

The Bochurim, which include local Monsey boys, as well as families from out of town, jumped right into the new Zman with seder Hayeshiva beginning right after Mincha.